Holding Pen
by EvenAtMyDarkest
Summary: "'I'm a drawing,' he suddenly thinks, slightly hysterical for a moment. 'One more thing to add to the list.'" Set during the season 2 episode "Fear Her."


_My first upload! So apologies if there are formatting errors or any weirdness in that area. I do not own the show Doctor Who, nor am I in any way affiliated with it. All I own are my words._

He opens his mouth but before he has a chance to begin speaking he is blown backwards by the force of the ionic energy suddenly surrounding him. But there is no street anymore to land on. This is how he suddenly and inexplicably finds himself _gone_.

He lies there on his back, wherever _there_ is, stunned for a few moments. His entire body is tingling with ionic energy. He is breathing hard, and suddenly realizes that his eyes are closed.

He feels hands taking hold of his arms, and he snaps them open. He is staring into a face that seems familiar. He realizes after a second or two that he has seen it on a "Missing" poster. It's Dale Hicks.

"Mister, are you all right?" he asks, and the Doctor goes to sit himself up, which is how he discovers that he's got one hand closed into a fist. He wonders for a second at the reason for this, and remembers that only moments before he had this hand closed around the energy detector that he built.

"Ahh, blimey," he mutters in disappointment, and sits up very suddenly, startling the other two children who are kneeling around him. He stares about at them. "Danny? Jane?" He looks back at the boy he first saw, and by now he is smiling widely. "Dale?"

They all seem to lean forward a bit. "You know us?" the girl—Jane—says, and the Doctor sees that she has her arms wrapped around the ginger cat that Rose noticed earlier.

 _Rose_. Had she seen him disappear? She must have worked out what had happened pretty quickly. So… logically… the first thing she would do is find Chloe. The Doctor hopes she will be gentle.

Jane continues, "Have people been looking for us?" and the Doctor looks back to her.

"Yes," he says, "they have. _I_ have, and look where it's gotten me, huh?" He studies them for a few more seconds before saying, "Dale Hicks, Danny Edwoods, and Jane McKillen, pleasure to meet you. I'm the Doctor. And you don't have to worry anymore, because we are getting out of here."

He grimaces with a sudden bout of discomfort, probably brought on by the sudden shift between worlds and the ionic energy completely engulfing him. He can still feel the tingling, spread out over his entire body. He honestly cannot describe what surrounds him. It's just a wide stretch of nothing, made up of all the colours he can name in a mix that somehow doesn't combine them, nor can he distinguish each one. After a quick once-over, he asks the children, "How big is this place?"

"We don't know," Dale says ruefully. "We've tried walking, but it's all the same, everywhere. _I_ think it goes on forever."

"Interesting theory, Dale, but fortunately for us an infinite prison—an infinite _anything_ —is quite impossible." He leaps to his feet suddenly, and has to let out a quiet moan as he puts his hand to his head, staggering slightly.

"Careful, mister," Jane says, and he looks down at them. They are climbing to their feet as well, and they all look relatively unconcerned. Maybe a bit worried about him— _sweet kids_ , he thinks—and anxious to hear what's going on in the real world, but certainly not overcome by ionic energy. He knows, of course, that humans can't detect traces of it like he can, but _this_ is ridiculous.

"Can't you feel it?" he asks them incredulously, but they just look at him in confusion.

 _Focus, Doctor. It doesn't matter._

He turns round, and is shocked to see the TARDIS standing there. He stares at it incredulously for a few moments. When would the Isolus have seen his TARDIS? It hasn't left the Weber house, not that he's seen. Which can only mean…

It followed them. He isn't sure what this entails, but it can't be good… can it?

Daring to hope even though he knows it's probably silly, he rushes towards the TARDIS.

His key doesn't work. Typical.

"What is that?" Jane asks as he steps back to survey it.

"Doesn't matter," he says, still distracted as he looks up at it. "It's just a drawing now."

He pulls out his screwdriver and tries to sonic the door. It doesn't work. He wasn't expecting it to, but still he sags with disappointment.

"What's that?" Danny asks with fascination, and the Doctor notes that this is the first time he's spoken. Quiet kid.

"This is my sonic screwdriver," he says, and without another word of explanation, he gets to work.

He's trying to find the parameters of their prison—as he said earlier, oblivious to the fact that he would soon be a victim as well, "Chloe's using it to steal those kids and place them in some kind of holding pen made up of ionic power." If he can just find the edges, then maybe…

Suddenly they are surrounded by loud, booming sounds, and he flinches. A few small pairs of hands grasp his forearms to steady him. "It's okay," Dale says. "That's just people talking."

The Doctor looks at him incredulously. "Is that so? How can you tell?"

"Just listen." Dale holds up one finger, and all the children are silent. The Doctor follows suit, and gradually, the booming becomes buzzing, and the buzzing becomes words, and the words become recognizable voices.

"… _the only one who could help you, now BRING HIM BACK!_ "

That's Rose. Of course it's Rose. He could have figured it out even if he somehow had not been able to recognize her voice. She sounds angry, upset. He wants to reach out and comfort her. He watches as she grasps Chloe's shoulders, and…

He flinches again, and the image goes fuzzy with his loss of concentration. He can't explain what he's looking through, but in his mind's eye, he sees Rose, holding a sheet of paper as she demands that he be returned to the real world. It's almost like it's actually happening right in front of him. In a way, he supposes, it is.

"I can see it," he says, stunned.

"We're looking out through the paper," Jane says, almost eerily calm. He glances back at her, and by now his concentration is completely broken, the image vanished. But he can still hear the voices.

" _Doctor, if you can hear me, I'm going to get you out of there_."

Rose. He breaks out into a wide grin. "I hear you," he says, and she doesn't acknowledge his words, though he's not really surprised. He turns to the kids. "It's all right," he says. "You hear that? My good friend Rose is going to help us. She's going to get all of us out." _  
_

"How long have we been in here?" Jane asks, sounding almost fearful.

"How long does it feel like?" he asks, surprised.

She shakes her head slowly. "I don't know. I really haven't the foggiest."

He looks to the boys, but they only shrug.

"A week," he says gently, and Jane nods, biting her lip. He opens his arms, and she rushes into them. After a moment, Danny joins in. The Doctor reaches out one arm towards Dale, and he, with just a hint of reluctance, joins as well.

A protesting meow sounds from somewhere in the group hug, and they all pull away from each other. The Doctor looks at the cat, which is now struggling in Jane's arms. "Why don't you put it down, Jane?" he asks.

She hugs it tighter. "It might wander off."

"I don't think it will," he says, and something about his tone seems to calm her a bit. She crouches down and lets the cat jump to the ground, or whatever it is that's holding them up.

The Doctor watches as the cat starts to pad off. But when it's about six metres off, it begins to veer off the straight line it had been walking in, traveling in a circle around them. The children watch idly, while the Doctor watches with intense interest.

Finally, the cat reaches them again. It cocks its head, and walks right past, heading in exactly the same direction it began in.

"You see that," he says triumphantly, watching the cat go, "it went in a circle."

"So?" Dale says.

" _So_ , there's a perception filter, or something similar, affecting this… this holding pen, if you will. This whole world is no bigger than the circle you just saw that cat walk."

"No," Jane says incredulously.

"We walked for _ages_ ," Danny asserts emphatically.

"You walked in a circle," the Doctor explains. "No way to tell, is there? No landmarks, no stars, no nothing. We're trapped in a…" He chooses to avoid explaining the whole ionic energy thing. "…a piece of paper. How big do you imagine it is?"

The children seem perfectly aware of the basics on the nature of their imprisonment—they are in a drawing. He isn't sure exactly how they know, but they do. "So we just walked in a circle, over and over again?" Dale says dubiously.

"That's right," the Doctor says. "You didn't just _happen_ across each other as you appeared in here, one by one. We all appeared in the very same place."

"Are we safe here, Doctor?" Jane asks suddenly.

The Doctor fixes his eyes on her. "Of course. Why would you ask that?"

"It's just… it was Chloe, she trapped us here, it was _her_. She hasn't hurt us yet, but is she going to?"

"No, no, no, sweetheart, of course not. Listen," and he leans in to let her know this is serious, "that isn't even Chloe, it just _looks_ like her. It's just a lonely kid, trying to gather some friends. And it chose you." He notes with some amusement that they can't help but be a little flattered.

"Chose you, too," Danny speaks up.

The Doctor pauses, and thinks about that. _I guess I set myself up for that one, didn't I?_ "Yes… I suppose it did," he murmurs. Speaking more loudly, he continues, "It doesn't understand that this is the wrong way to go about making friends. We're going to make it understand, and then it will let us out. Have you got that?"

The children definitely look happier, he notes with satisfaction. "Maybe we can make friends after we get out," Dale says.

"Yeah," Jane agrees, "so it won't be lonely."

He smiles. "That's a very nice thought, Dale. But when it lets us out," and he's careful to not say _if_ , "that means that it's going back home, where all its old friends are. And everyone can go home happy."

They all look excited now, and his smile grows wider. He suddenly realizes, though, that he might be putting too much faith in Rose. He is sure that she can figure it out, but an extra boost is far from a bad idea.

He is suddenly assaulted with the image of Chloe tapping a few keys on her computer, and watching for a few moments. The Olympics. And in a split second, he knows exactly what she is about to do, and what he must do to help Rose.

She begins to scribble furiously on a fresh sheet of paper, and he recalls what she said earlier—"They don't stop moaning. I tried to help them, but they don't stop moaning."

 _So she can hear us._

"Isolus!" he calls frantically, and he _knows_ it heard him, but its hand doesn't falter. "Listen to me! My friend is trying to find your pod! She can reactivate it! You can't steal all those people, it's not right!"

But no matter what he says, the creature inside Chloe Weber remains impassive.

Finally, he throws in the towel. She's almost finished drawing. Thousands upon thousands of people are about to disappear, and…

He suddenly stops mid-thought.

They disappear, then where do they go?

And all at once, what he wishes more than anything is for this prison to have elastic walls.

"Kids, come here," he says, quiet but urgent, and he gathers them together, his arms around them, because he really doesn't know what will happen if this world's population suddenly grows from four (and a cat) to almost a hundred thousand.

He finds out seconds later. And it's not so bad.

Ionic energy skitters across his skin with such intensity that he can't suppress a loud cry of shock. He startles the children, but his attention is immediately redirected to his surroundings.

People, as far as the eye can see, spaced out evenly, with enough space to be sprawled out on the ground, as most of them are. The sheer number of them is incredible. There is no end in sight.

"I think our little world just got a whole lot bigger," he murmurs to the kids, who are staring around, gob smacked. He smiles and pats the nearest kid on the back, standing up.

He is beginning to notice that it's difficult to move suddenly or quickly here. He supposes that would naturally stem from being turned into a child's drawing. _I'm a drawing_ , he suddenly thinks, slightly hysterical for a moment. _One more thing to add to the list._

He casts his mind back to what he'd realized earlier… The Olympics… Yes! That's it! He needs to communicate a message to Rose. How to do that… He can't speak to her, so he's got to s _how_ her.

Again he pulls out his sonic screwdriver, praying to whoever can hear him that he'll be able to have _some_ kind of influence over the ionic power that he's nearly drowning in. He holds it high, squeezing his eyes shut in concentration.

"Doctor?" a little voice says next to him. "Whatcha doin'?"

He ignores it. Actually, he barely hears it. He is focusing all his thoughts and all his energy and pinpointing them on the one goal of cracking through whatever force is separating him from the real world. He realizes that he's been holding his breath, and he lets out a gasp, staggering a bit.

Jane is standing next to him, looking a little concerned but mostly confused. "Are you okay?"

"Can you change the drawings?" he asks, fixing his gaze on her even as he's bent over, panting with effort. He's almost certain he already knows the answer, but he had to make sure and hear it firsthand.

Confusion wins over in her face.

"The drawing, the drawing you're trapped in. Are you able to change your image in it?"

She tilts her head. "Yeah."

He looks at her searchingly for a moment. She seems certain enough. He snaps his attention back to his screwdriver. "So you can do it. A human child can do it. You can manipulate your own image in the paper. BUT," and he didn't intend to shout this last word, but he does, and it makes Jane jump, "creating something _else_ is an entirely different process."

He holds up the screwdriver, and focuses again. He tries to visualize the energy swirling around him, which is a bit difficult at first because it's practically choking him. But eventually he can see it, and he moves the screwdriver slowly, trying to bring a chunk of it together in front of him.

It takes a long time, and he completely forgets the thousands of people that surround him, the children, even the fact that he's imprisoned in an artificial world of ionic power. Nothing matters except this one image. All his hope is riding on Rose seeing it and understanding what it means. He doesn't know whether the Isolus will tell Rose exactly what it needs, but based on the fact that sometimes kids just don't know how to communicate such things, he's not about to pin his hopes on that. He and Rose have to handle this themselves.

It's working. Ionic energy is gathering. When he thinks he's finally got enough, he breaks concentration with a loud gasp, and the details of the situation come rushing back to him. Jane is no longer at his side, apparently having lost interest. The people who once filled the Olympic stadium have all stood up by now, and it's _loud_. They're talking, they're all talking, and many of them seem to be panicking.

The Doctor turns his attention back to the energy before him. He reaches out and puts his hands on either side of it, palms facing inward. It's not necessary, but it helps him focus. He closes his eyes, but finds that that particular action does _not_ help. He has to find the colours he wants in his surroundings, and transfer them to this little ball of energy that he's gotten together.

It's difficult. As he told Chloe before, of all the talents and strengths he has as a Time Lord, creativity is not one of them. He looks about, trying to pinpoint a colour, any colour. He has no idea how.

His gaze moves down to his screwdriver, radiating blue light. He decides to start with blue. Why not?

And once he's got that in his head, suddenly, he can see blue. Myriad specks of it, absolutely everywhere he looks. And he wonders how in the world he managed to miss them before.  
He uses the energy of his thoughts, and he channels it with his screwdriver. And he takes the tiniest portion of that blue, and gathers it, colouring the cloud of ionic power in front of him. He shapes it, bending it into lines and then filling the spaces in between.

It's crude, but it works. He's done it.

Immediately when he's finished, he goes to orange. Unfortunately, there's nothing orange in front of him to focus on, but now that he's got the hang of it, he is able to visualize. It takes less time with this one.

He steps back to survey his handiwork. Looks like a child's drawing. He tilts his head, and turns round to look about him as he begins to realize something.

"Doctor?" a little voice says in front of him, and he looks down. Jane, Dale, and Danny stand before him. "What's that?" Jane asks, pointing behind him.

He steps aside, glancing back at it briefly before his gaze wanders off again. "It's a drawing," he answers distractedly.

"It doesn't look real," Danny says, sounding fascinated.

"It's not," the Doctor says. "Again, it's just a drawing. Unlike us."

But he's realizing… none of them look quite real, either. The people. _The perception filter_ , he suddenly thinks. It made them turn when they tried to walk in a straight line, and it's messing with their perception of their surroundings, as well. For the first time he tries to take a good, long look at the children's faces, and finds that it's difficult. They're not made of ionic energy like his drawing is, but still they look… wrong, somehow. He blinks, and tries to look again, squinting. He can't quite put his finger on it, but… they do… they look like drawings.

He shakes his head, trying to clear it, because the way they look in here doesn't matter as long as they won't be damaged when they get out, which he's almost sure they won't.

Booming surrounds him again, and he, along with thousands of other people, flinches. The only people who don't seem concerned are the children, who are obviously used to it by now.

He focuses, and the booming turns into voices. He hears Rose, and the Isolus. His eyes stretch wide. "She's found it," he says, a little numbly. "The pod. _She's already found it_."

He points the sonic screwdriver at his drawing, not sure what exactly he has to do to make sure that he's projecting it onto the sheet of paper he's trapped in. Maybe it's already worked. He just doesn't know.

" _The pod is dead._ " It's the Isolus.

" _It—it only needs heat._ "

" _It needs more than heat_."

He doesn't know how he knows, but suddenly, he can see the picture. The one in Chloe's bedroom. In it, he stands with his hands in his pockets, the TARDIS to his left and the Olympic torch that he's drawn to his right.

It's done, it's finished. And the next part, even though he's got _no_ idea how to do it, comes very easily. He points, and the image of himself in his mind's eye points as well.

A new voice. " _I'm not being funny or nothing, but that picture just moved. And that one!_ "

It takes him a moment of thought, but he recognizes the voice as that of the tarmacker that they met earlier that day.

He tries to focus. It's getting easier now, focusing on all these different things that he can't actually see. He watches as Rose rushes over to pick the picture up, and just seeing her makes him smile.

" _She didn't draw that, he did._ "

His point of view changes somehow, but he doesn't question it. Nothing is concrete here. It's almost like a dream. Now, he is peering out of the eyes that the Isolus drew, and Rose is looking right into them. " _But it needs more than heat, Doctor_."

His heart sinks, just a bit, but he reminds himself that she might not understand straightaway. She needs to think for a few seconds. He dearly hopes that they _have_ a few seconds, because he glimpses Chloe drawing something big on the wall, and he can't tell exactly what it is, but he does see that the main colours are blue and green…

Rose speaks again, and he zeroes in on her voice. " _Love_ ," she says, and he can't help it—he breaks out into a grin. " _I know how to charge up the pod_."

And he starts whooping, rushing over to the children and grabbing one of them, who happens to be Dale, and swinging him around. The other two look on in confusion. The Doctor sets the child back down on the ground.

"What's going on, Doctor?" Jane asks, brow furrowed.

"We're getting out." He beams, and kisses her on the forehead. On hearing his words, she and Dale both let out squeals of joy, while Danny stands still, looking stunned even as he grins widely. The Doctor goes to hug him, and he hugs back.

After a few seconds, the Doctor holds him by his shoulders and looks into his eyes. "You okay?" he asks, still beaming.

Danny's grin doesn't fade. He nods excitedly.

He gathers them together even closer. "All right, kids, listen. You remember how I said that Chloe isn't the one doing this?"

They all nod.

"She's not, but it is true that she _does_ need friends. The creature who looks like her, who's put us in here, it was lonely, but so was Chloe. Is. So _is_ Chloe. So do you think, maybe after all this is over… you could invite her to play?"

They all look at each other. He sees the agreement in their eyes even before they start nodding.

He grins. "Good."

He pats them each on the back, straightening up. "Shouldn't be but a few minutes," he says confidently, and strides away, leaving them chattering excitedly. He wants to examine the TARDIS up close and see what he can observe while he's here.

He loses his sense of time, and in the end, he's not even sure why, and he's got _no_ idea how long it's been when the ionic energy suddenly seems to thicken almost to the point of tangibility. He's gasping for air, though he's barely aware of it. He feels as if it's about to suffocate him.

He's lost any awareness of his surroundings, and when he finally snaps back, the details come flooding back to him and he's dangerously close to losing his footing and cracking his head open on the street. He stumbles violently, trips a bit, and finally manages to right himself.

He is standing in exactly the same place that he was before. He grabs at his own chest, almost reflexively, just to make sure he's real. He is. And he hasn't realized it till now, but for the last… however long it's been, he _hasn't_ felt real. Nothing really did, even though he knew that it was technically happening. He can't recall visual details. There are only words, and colours.

Something crunches under his shoes and he looks down, still panting and dazed. His ionic energy detector lies in pieces on the asphalt, and a few shards of it are now sticking out of his trainers. He hops away quickly, promptly plops down on the ground and yanks his shoes off.

His feet look undamaged, thank goodness. He carefully removes the glass from the undersides of his shoes and pulls them back onto his feet.

He stays still for a long moment, savoring the feeling of the ground beneath him and the light breeze blowing past him. Finally, he climbs to his feet, and turns.

The TARDIS stands exactly where he left it, although of course he knows it has, in fact, moved. He casts his mind back. The children will have been freed from their drawings, and the Isolus can go home… All that's left to be done is to see it off.

Grinning widely, he goes to the TARDIS, the closest thing he has to a home anymore, and prepares to send off a lost kid to hers.


End file.
